A car bomb in Baghdad killed at least five people on Saturday and wounded a senior Interior Ministry official, five days after the head of Iraq's Governing Council was assassinated in a similar bombing.
Deputy Interior Minister General Abdel Jabar al-Shaikli was in a stable condition in hospital, but four guards and a woman neighbour died in what may have been a suicide attack outside his home.
US generals have predicted more violence as Iraqis prepare to take over running their own affairs next month.
US efforts to ensure a pro-American government after the handover on June 30 and elections next year took a fresh knock when the Pentagon admitted it was investigating more killings of Iraqis in US custody, among them a general who US officials said last year had died of natural causes.
The Washington Post followed up its publication of grim new images, including video, of Iraqi prisoners being beaten and sexually humiliated by US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib jail with leaked testimony from soldiers involved.
Some described their part in the abuse as pranks. Other statements suggested a streak of sadistic glee among the guards.
US soldiers at Saturday's bomb scene said neighbours reported shooting shortly before the blast, suggesting the guards may have tried to avert a suicide attack.
PENTAGON PROBE: A senior US military official said the army had investigated 32 deaths in Iraq.
Eight prisoner deaths have been classified by doctors as "homicides", not including two deaths previously declared homicides by the army.
Among those still being investigated is that of General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who once headed Saddam Hussein's air defences. He died under interrogation last November.
The US military said at the time he apparently died of natural causes. But an autopsy released on Friday said Mowhoush died of "asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression".
Two weeks ago, Mowhoush's son Issam told reporters in Baghdad that his father's body was dumped at a hospital, badly bruised and burned, two months after he gave himself up to the Americans following the arrest of four of his sons.
Issam al-Hamed said the youngest of his brothers arrested was just 16. He accused US soldiers of beating them and giving them electric shocks during 5-1/2 months in custody.
"Our father handed himself to the Americans three days after we were arrested. For two months he was tortured, and when he died because of the torture they dropped his body at the front gate of a hospital and left him there," Issam al-Hamed said.
The Pentagon released 22 other autopsies, with causes of death including "multiple gunshot wounds", "strangulation", "blunt force injuries and asphyxia", but also natural causes.
Other cases included a prisoner believed to have choked in January while his arms were shackled over his head to his cell door and one who died under interrogation by special forces.
SOLDIERS' TALES: The Washington Post published testimony from guards involved in the abuse scandal at the prison, a day after it published new photographs and video. A scene of a soldier hitting a prisoner was repeatedly played on Arab television on Saturday. The affair has badly undermined US credibility across the Middle East.
The abuse at the prison was first reported by Specialist Joseph Darby. The paper quoted Darby quoting Specialist Charles Graner, a prison guard in civilian life who is one of six military police reservists facing court martial in the case.
Darby said Graner told him: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'"
A seventh soldier, Jeremy Sivits, was jailed for a year on Wednesday and is expected to testify against fellow guards. US officials want justice to be seen to be done in an effort to contain the scandal. But the administration is dogged by evidence of abuses by other troops, away from Abu Ghraib.
President George W. Bush will lay out his detailed plan on Monday for handing back power to Iraqis. An interim government is due to be formed within a couple of weeks, representing Iraq's ethnic and religious communities.
Amid signs of increasing Iraqi frustration with the occupation, an Iraqi delegation is heading for the United Nations to join discussion on a Security Council resolution that Washington hopes will place a UN seal on the handover.
A council diplomat said a proposed US resolution was likely to speak of a "full transfer of sovereignty" - but that the interim government would then limit its own powers to ensure, for example, a continued US military presence.
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